Soros Threatens GPS Signals for Military

As Republican lawmakers begin to dig into the White House’s cozy relationship with a startup wireless company and the wealthy Democratic donor who owns it, a new character has appeared on the story’s edges: liberal superdonor, conservative bete noire and controversial investor George Soros.

Soros reportedly invested in the telecom company LightSquared through a hedge fund, and many of the nonprofits he finances have backed LightSquared in regulatory and policy disputes.

The background:

LightSquared wants to compete with AT&T, Verizon and Sprint to provide mobile broadband (for instance, email and Internet on your Blackberry or iPhone).Harbinger Capital Partners, a hedge fund run by billionaire financier Philip Falcone, owns LightSquared, and deftly steered the company through some tricky regulatory waters (with would-be competitors AT&T and Verizon fighting him along the way) to get preliminary approval for its plan to start a high-speed broadband wireless network.Today, LightSquared is scuffling with the global positioning satellite industry, which argues that the company’s current plan would interfere with GPS signals. Air Force Gen. William Shelton, head of Space Command, testified to Congress this month that giving LightSquared the radio frequencies it is slated to get would interfere with the military’s GPS needs.Here’s the potential scandal: Ahead of Shelton’s testimony, White House officials nudged Shelton to go easy on LightSquared, according to Daily Beast reporter Eli Lake. Shelton reportedly said that someone (presumably in the administration) had leaked the first draft of his testimony to LightSquared — which Falcone denies.Another government official said the White House pushed him to downplay the GPS worries.Falcone is a big political donor who has given exclusively to Democrats and independents since Obama’s election. Emails have surfaced showing LightSquared executives discussing donations to Obama’s campaign in policy conversations with White House officials. Finally, there’s the eye-catchingdetail that another Obama donor, George Haywood, steered then-Sen. Obama to invest $90,000 in the company (then named SkyTerra) back in 2005.LightSquared’s main lobbying firm is owned by Norman Brownstein, a major fundraiser for Obama’s 2008 nominating convention.

Why is the GPS community concerned?

Source: http://www.pnt.gov/interference/lightsquared/The base stations of the LightSquared network will transmit signals in a radio band immediately adjacent to the GPS frequencies. The GPS community is concerned because testing has shown that LightSquared’s ground-based transmissions overpower the relatively weak GPS signal from space. Although LightSquared will operate in its own radio band, that band is so close to the GPS signals that most GPS devices pick up the stronger LightSquared signal and become overloaded or jammed.There is also concern that the FCC may approve a technical solution to the problem that requires millions of existing GPS users to upgrade or replace their devices.

Into this stew of lobbying, investments, regulation and influence, enter Soros.Soros has long been a whipping boy for conservatives, in much the same way that free-market billionaires Charles and David Koch have become the target of liberals.While Soros’ influence is constantly and grossly exaggerated by conservatives, it’s still real. He generously funds a huge swath of the liberal movement, and has aligned his business interests with Obama’s big-government policies. For instance, Obama green-energy official Cathy Zoi left the Energy Department earlier this year to help run a new green-energy (and thus subsidy-dependent) investment fund Soros was starting.In the LightSquared affair, Soros shows up repeatedly.

First, Soros is reportedly an investor in LightSquared. The Wall Street Journal reported in November 2010: “In 2009, while some investors were asking for withdrawals, others were lining up to put money into Harbinger. They included Soros Fund Management, which during the past year became a significant new investor, say people familiar with the matter.”

I asked about this, but a Soros spokesman emailed me, “As a matter of policy, we don’t confirm or deny information on our investments.”

Military GPS threatened by mobile broadband

2011-11-22 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEGPS experts fear for signal integrity as mobile broadband increases.Military GPS manufacturers in the US are concerned the increase in mobile broadband is threatening delicate satellite signals that power the GPS market for military and commercial aviation navigation.Speaking at the fifth annual Stanford University symposium on Position, Navigation and Time, Professor Brad Parkinson, one of the pioneers of GPS, stated that the interference of mobile broadband with signals could cause “immediate and disastrous” consequences.In particular, Professor Parkinson is fearful that the US government approved broadband company LightSquared will threaten the integrity of GPS signals when it locates into the spectrum used to run the nation’s GPS systems.Lightsquared is currently working on solutions to the problem, amidst calls on the US Federal Communications Commission to permanently block LightSquared from using the upper band of its licensed radio spectrum.In a statement, LightSquared’s Martin Harrimansaid stated: “The GPS interference issue can be solved and is not … an unsolvable physics problem.“The entire debate has turned from whether there is a solution to who pays for it.”

Additionally, the telecom- and tech-related liberal nonprofits Soros funds have gone to bat for LightSquared in its various policy fights. In April 2010, the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission backing Harbinger’s business plans and met with an FCC commissioner on the matter. Four groups that belong to that coalition received six-figure gifts from Soros’ Open Society Institute the year before.Six months later, those four Soros-funded groups — Free Press, Media Access Project, the New America Foundation, and Public Knowledge – filed a joint comment backing LightSquared in a related regulatory matter.Donations from a politically interested billionaire, of course, do not make an activist group a “front” for the billionaire’s business interest. In fact, the unseemly fundraising-cum-lobbying emails were unearthed this year by the Center for Public Integrity, which Soros funded early last decade. And one profile, by liberal writer Jane Mayer, painted a picture of Soros almost as a rich sucker rather than a scheming moneyman.Still, as Congress begins looking into the politics behind LightSquared’s regulatory victories, it’s worth asking if Soros, the Left’s leading donor, played a role in the affair.Donations from a politically interested billionaire, of course, do not make an activist group a “front” for the billionaire’s business interest. In fact, the unseemly fundraising-cum-lobbying emails were unearthed this year by the Center for Public Integrity, which Soros funded early last decade. And one profile, by liberal writer Jane Mayer, painted a picture of Soros almost as a rich sucker rather than a scheming moneyman.Still, as Congress begins looking into the politics behind LightSquared’s regulatory victories, it’s worth asking if Soros, the Left’s leading donor, played a role in the affair.September 21, 2011By Timothy P. Carney - Senior Political ColumnistSource: The Washington Examiner